“I do not blame you,” resumed Father Morris; “a reasonable being should believe nothing he cannot prove; and to remove your doubts, I would advise you to step into the adjoining churchyard, where you can try Dr. Entwerfen’s galvanic battery of fifty surgeon power, (which you must allow is surely enough to reanimate the dead,) upon a body which then—”
“Hold! hold!” cried Edric, shuddering. “My blood freezes in my veins, at the thought of a churchyard:—your words recall a horrible dream that I had last night, which, even now, dwells upon my mind, and resists all the efforts I can make to shake it off.”
“Tell it, then,” said the Confessor sternly; “for when the imagination is possessed by horrible fantasies, it is relieved by speaking of them to another person.”
“I thought,” said Edric, “that I was wandering in a thick gloomy wood, through which I had the utmost difficulty to make my way. The black trees, frowning in awful majesty above my head, twined together in masses, so as almost to obstruct my path. Suddenly, a fearful light flashed upon me, and I saw at my feet a horrid charnel house, where the dying mingled terrifically with the dead. The miserable living wretches turned and writhed with pain, striving in vain to escape from the mass of putrescence heaped upon them. I saw their eyeballs roll in agony—I watched the distortion of their features, and, making a violent effort to relieve one who had almost crawled to my feet, I shrank back with horror as I found the arm I grasped soften to my touch, and a disgusting mass of corruption give way beneath my fingers!—Shuddering I awoke—a cold sweat hanging upon my brows, and every nerve thrilling with convulsive agony.”
“Mere visionary terrors,” said the father. “You have suffered your imagination to dwell upon one subject, till it is become morbid.
“Is it not strange,” continued Edric, apparently pursuing the current of his own thoughts, “that the mind should crave so earnestly what the body shudders at; and yet, how can a mass of mere matter, which we see sink into corruption the moment the spirit is withdrawn from it, shudder? How can it even feel? I can scarcely analyse my own sensations; but it appears to me that two separate and distinct spirits animate the mass of clay which composes the human frame. The one, the merely vital spark which gives it life and motion, and which we share in common with brutes, and even vegetables; and the other, the divine ethereal spirit, which we may properly term the soul, and which is a direct emanation from God himself, only bestowed upon man.”
“In my opinion,” said Father Morris, “the organs of thought, reflection, imagination, and reason, are material; and as long as the body remains uncorrupted all may be restored, provided circulation can be renewed: for that I think the principle essentially necessary to set the animal machine in motion.”
“I confess,” resumed Edric, “we all know that circulation and the action of the lungs are inseparably connected, and that if the latter be arrested, death must ensue. How frequently are apparently dead bodies recovered by friction, which produces circulation; and inflation of the lungs with air, which restores their action. If the idea be correct, that the soul leaves the body the instant what we call death takes place, how can these instances of resuscitation be accounted for? Think you that the soul can be recalled to the body after it has once quitted it? Or that it hovers over it in air, attached to it by invisible ligatures, ready to be drawn back to its former situation, when the body shall resume its vital functions? It cannot surely remain in a dormant state, and be reawakened with the body; for this would be inconsistent with the very idea of an incorporeal spirit.”
“If you could overcome your childish reluctance to trying an experiment upon a corpse,” said Father Morris, “your doubts would be set at rest. For if you could succeed in reanimating a dead body that had been long entombed, so that it might enjoy its reasoning faculties in full perfection, my opinion would be completely established.”
“But where shall I find a body, which has been dead a sufficient time to prevent the possibility of its being only in a trance, and which yet has not begun to decompose?—For even if I could conquer the repugnance I feel at the thought of touching such a mass of cold mortality, as that presented in my dream, according to your own theory, the organs must be perfect, or the experiment will not be complete.”
“What think you of trying to operate upon a mummy? You know a chamber has been lately discovered in the great pyramid, which is supposed to be the real tomb of Cheops; and where, it is said, the mummies of that great king and the principal personages of his household, have been found in a state of wonderful preservation.”
“But mummies are so swathed up.”
“Not those of kings and princes. You know all travellers, both ancient and modern, who have seen them, agree, that they are wrapped merely in folds of red and white linen, every finger and even every toe distinct; thus, if you could succeed in resuscitating Cheops, you need not even touch the body; as the clothing in which it is wrapped, would not at all encumber its movements.”
“The idea is feasible, and, as you rightly say, if it can be put into execution, will set the matter at rest forever. I should also like to visit the pyramids, those celebrated monuments of antiquity, whose origin is lost in the obscurity of the darker ages, and which seem to have been spared by the devastating hand of Time, purposely to perplex the learned.”
Dr. Entwerfen had been present during the whole of this conversation, though he had been so busied with some philosophical experiments, that he had not joined in
